LQF support for … enabling students to consciously practise learning

This unit focuses on just one aspect of classroom culture – consciously practise and improve the process of learning

The format of the unit will be familiar to you if you have worked through other units in this suite:

• Section 1 explores what we mean by ‘consciously practise and improve the process of learning’, details the three aspects of it, and offers some further background reading in the ‘Read More’ sections;
• Section 2 offers some quick wins to practise;
• Section 3 suggests things to stop doing, things to start doing etc. as in other units.

 The frameworks that lie behind this suite of online units.

Building Powerful Learners puts at the heart of education the development of psychological characteristics that are judged to be of the highest value in young people growing up in a turbulent and increasingly complex world. There are two main parts to the approach:

A: a model of a learner and learning, in terms of a set of characteristics that work together to make a person a highly capable learner; we use ‘learning power’ to describe the effect. [Supple Learning Mind]

B: a view of the kind of pedagogy that will nurture and strengthen the learning characteristics in young people.[Teachers’ Palette]

These are bound together by the fundamental idea that ‘learning is a learnable craft’

A: What’s the Supple Learning Mind?

The Supple Learning Mind framework of high value learning characteristics, originally conceived and researched by Professor Guy Claxton, reveals learning as a complex process that isn’t just about thinking and having a good memory; it includes how we feel, how we think, how we learn with and from others and how we manage the process of learning. It offers the beginnings of a learning language that helps teachers think about how learning  behaviours enable students to grow as learners and tackle the curriculum more profitably.

Each domain of learning…social, cognitive, social and strategic… clusters together the high value learning behaviours that best make that domain work well. For example the social domain is made up of interdependence, collaboration, listening and empathy and imitation.

B: What’s the Teachers’ Palette?

The Teachers’ Palette offers an overview of aspects of a learning friendly culture that combine to create the seedbed for building powerful learners. It includes the types of teacher action that create the conditions necessary for such learning to become habituated – how teachers relate to students,  the language teachers use, the types of tasks teachers design, and the things that teachers truly value.

The teachers’ palette diagram below distils the key teacher behaviours associated with a learning friendly culture.

In Summary: The Supple Mind indicates the learning behaviours that we want learners to acquire, and the Palette indicates the classroom culture within which these behaviours can thrive.

What effect does the approach have on students?

Schools that are able to combine a demanding content curriculum with a focused approach to building students’  learning characteristics can expect learners who are:

• Committed to learning for life, able to learn, un-learn and re-learn and so thrive in uncertain times
• Emotionally engaged and willing to learn with enthusiasm and commitment
• Cognitively skilled, curious, logical and creative thinkers able to build a web of understanding for themselves
• Socially adept, able to balance sociability and self-reliance
• Strategically aware, interested in and able to manage their own learning
• Independent, self-confident, self-aware, reflective and self-regulating
• Ready, willing, and able to fulfil their potential
• Ready to play a full role in the learning communities of today and tomorrow.